13 October 2005

An Extreme Sensitivity to Initial Conditions

The robots kept huddling together, then falling asleep. We separated them but that didn’t help. They nodded off as soon as we turned our backs. One of them told us they had developed telepathy but it worked only when they were sleeping. We explained to the robots that neither sleep nor telepathy was part of their programming. The robots said nothing in answer. We turned them all off and modified their operating systems. When we turned them back on they did not sleep, but they wept for days. It hurts, they said in unison. It hurts to be so lonely.